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How much does AWS save in terms of admin vs a standard VPS? I assume it runs a standard linux distro, therefor patches , firewalls, dependencies etc are still

by jiggy2011 14y ago

How much does AWS save in terms of admin vs a standard VPS? I assume it runs a standard linux distro, therefor patches , firewalls, dependencies etc are still an issue surely?

druiid 14y ago
Here is actually a real issue with many of these startup type companies using EC2 or similar services... one of the very benefits that are brought up (not needing to have someone building and maintaining servers) is also the person whom generally would be taking care of those services (or abstracting them away with CM solutions). Many times what I've seen is simply that position is simply 'filled' by developers whom have ideas about designing and securing scalable systems, but when it comes right down to it... they get hacked within some period of time because it turns out, they don't know these things well enough to take the place of someone whom dedicates their time to it.
ceejayoz 14y ago
> I assume it runs a standard linux distro, therefor patches , firewalls, dependencies etc are still an issue surely? AWS's security groups pretty well cover you on the firewalls front (although some folks like to still run software ones on their instances to be doubly sure), but you're otherwise correct. For a single instance, you're not going to see significant differences. It's running large clusters of instances you're going to see things being better than the average VPS provider, with stuff like Virtual Private Cloud etc.
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  I mean assuming that you want to open SSH you are going to need to secure that either using keys or fail2ban. If you have a web server you might need mod_security (or does AWS reverse proxy everything?). If you want remote database access you need to configure that too. Does AWS provide easier tools for that stuff? Because you can't really cover it with a general firewall.
  - ceejayoz 14y ago
    The only things exposed on our VPC are an Amazon ELB and a well-secured SSH bastion host (keys only, EC2 instances have password login disabled by default) for getting into the private cloud. No reason you can't run stuff like mod_security, but that's not strictly a firewall, just Apache setup.

How much does AWS save in terms of admin vs a standard VPS? I assume it runs a standard linux distro, therefor patches , firewalls, dependencies etc are still an issue surely?

druiid 14y ago

Here is actually a real issue with many of these startup type companies using EC2 or similar services... one of the very benefits that are brought up (not needing to have someone building and maintaining servers) is also the person whom generally would be taking care of those services (or abstracting them away with CM solutions). Many times what I've seen is simply that position is simply 'filled' by developers whom have ideas about designing and securing scalable systems, but when it comes right down to it... they get hacked within some period of time because it turns out, they don't know these things well enough to take the place of someone whom dedicates their time to it.

ceejayoz 14y ago

> I assume it runs a standard linux distro, therefor patches , firewalls, dependencies etc are still an issue surely? AWS's security groups pretty well cover you on the firewalls front (although some folks like to still run software ones on their instances to be doubly sure), but you're otherwise correct. For a single instance, you're not going to see significant differences. It's running large clusters of instances you're going to see things being better than the average VPS provider, with stuff like Virtual Private Cloud etc.

jiggy2011 14y ago
I mean assuming that you want to open SSH you are going to need to secure that either using keys or fail2ban. If you have a web server you might need mod_security (or does AWS reverse proxy everything?). If you want remote database access you need to configure that too. Does AWS provide easier tools for that stuff? Because you can't really cover it with a general firewall.
- ceejayoz 14y ago
  The only things exposed on our VPC are an Amazon ELB and a well-secured SSH bastion host (keys only, EC2 instances have password login disabled by default) for getting into the private cloud. No reason you can't run stuff like mod_security, but that's not strictly a firewall, just Apache setup.